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God Is Stretching Us

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Scripture reading: Romans 5:1-5

One day I went down to the Ford factory. No place on Earth reminded me of hell more than that foundry where they smelt the metal. We walked along, watching the metal being changed, and I could imagine if I were that metal I would be complaining all the way. They put it in a terrible furnace; it was glowing so brightly that you couldn’t even look at it. Then they began to push it through rollers. One roller flattened it a little. I thought it was flat enough, but the other roller flattened it again. They kept on stretching and flattening that one small piece of metal until it was 3,000 feet long. It started at the length of about 20 feet, but they flattened it and stretched it to 3,000 feet. I said to God, “Lord, isn’t this what you are doing to us?” Some of the metal complained so badly that they had to discard it; it just wasn’t up to the mark. They had to take it off and throw it away. May God help us to realize that the circumstances of life which beat us, the ones that hit us hardest, are the things which are transforming us into the image of Christ. Every one of us has something that we hate. We would almost prefer to die than for some things to happen to us. But sometimes these are exactly the ones that happen to us.

One of the things that I feared most was my family being in want. When God sent me out on the mission field, I had no church behind me, no congregation behind me, and yet He commanded me to give up my profession, go out and preach to a people who I didn’t even know. I lived with people who never had a meal for a day; the area was so poor. They would boil a bush tea, take some sugar (sugar was easy to get in a sugar country of Jamaica) and give it to the baby. And that is what the baby and the parents lived on. We had to weed a field of about 10 acres with a hand hoe. There we were weeding all day so thirsty and so hungry that at about 2 o’clock we prayed that God would send us some food. Then we looked around the rocks and saw a little tray coming. It was a sister who said the Lord told her to bring us water and food. This is how those people lived. They really had a faith in God that was above the faith of those who had something. Sometimes they would eat one little dumpling and a little coconut oil for all day, but then  when we got home from the fields in the evening, we would go off to service and God would meet with us. God taught me to live with those people to learn what it was to really trust God and to know Him.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, February 1978)

Thought for today: May God help us to realize that the circumstances of life which beat us are the things which are transforming us into the image of Christ.

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Scripture reading: 1 Peter 1:12

God could not allow any human being to go to hell without having rejected Jesus. When you preach to people you must have this consciousness and this understanding. When you preach to a man, he does not have to say, “Yes, I accept Jesus,” at that moment. But you are putting him in a position that between your time with him and his death he is going to meet Jesus face to face and will have to say, “Yes, I accept Him.” Do you know what happens? You, the preacher, come right before him at the moment of his death. The witness that you give to a human being will last with him forever until he reaches the end of life. That witness will come back to him just as powerful as you gave it. This is why we must obey the Spirit. Don’t look for results. What about Brother Noah? He more than likely thought that he had no results. But Noah must have been the greatest evangelist in the entire world. His witness saved millions of people for eternity! We will never know how many until we reach heaven and begin to look up the records. He thought his preaching was in vain, but God said, “Preach!” and he just kept preaching. He visibly saved eight souls and thought, “Well, Lord Jesus, when I get to heaven my crown will only have eight little stars.” Then he was surprised. You also are going to be very surprised. That is why it is so absolutely necessary to remain in the perfect will of God. I will tell you something about that.

You are working with spirits that are working in conjunction with you. There are certain things that you can do but spirits cannot. Spirits cannot preach the gospel. They don’t know as much as you in the gospel. In 1 Peter 1 it says that the angels are inquiring about the message that God is giving you, the Church. He speaks about the prophets having received this great message but having to preach in the dark because they did not know what they were preaching. Yet they were not preaching to the people who lived then, they were preaching to us, who were not yet born. Would you like a job like that? Having to preach to a congregation who isn’t yet born? But this is what is happening.

In 1 Peter 1:12 it says, “Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.”

The things of God are being revealed to the Church. The revelation of the Spirit is to the Church and not to the angels. The worse part about it – or the best part about it – is that we have the Church divided into two. One part of the Church is in the spirit, in the heavenlies with Jesus, and another part of the Church (the militant Church) must meet the devil and fight him face to face on earth as the heavenly people cannot fight the devil.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, February 1978)

Thought for today: The witness that you give to a human being will last with him forever until he reaches the end of life and this is why we must obey the Spirit.

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Scripture reading: Romans 8:29-30

Let us read in Romans 8:29, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” 

You may ask, “So, Brother duCille, you start preaching predestination now?” Oh yes!

  • predestination to be saved;
  • predestination to be sacrificed;
  • predestination to be glorified;
  • predestination to be just like Jesus Christ.

That is your (our) predestiny.

You ask yourself a question, “So then the other poor guy out there, who is lost, is not predestined at all? He is lost and therefore he was predestinated for hell?” It is a fallacy. Let us look at who were predestined.

Romans 8:30, “Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called.”

Have you ever heard anybody boasting about his call? The truth is you are called before you are saved. For them whom he called, He justified. He made them just as if they had never sinned. When did that happen? When they accepted the call. But let us search the Scriptures and see who God has called for we will find out that He called everybody.

John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Verse 8 and 9 says, “He (John) was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”  We see here that the words light, Word and Jesus are synonymous.

Did you ever think of it that no human being can go to hell unless he has met Jesus and rejected Him? Did it ever occur to you that no human can ever go to heaven unless he has accepted Jesus?

Turn your Bibles to John 3:17-19, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

What is the condemnation? That light (the same light we read about in John 1 – the Word, Jesus) has come into the world and men reject Him. But if a thing has never been presented to you how could you reject it? Jesus stands at the crossroads of all humanity. Here we find millions and millions of people being born without knowing Jesus. It is God’s responsibility to reveal Himself to them and to you! All of your responsibility lies in the area of receiving or accepting that which God gives. And every sinner must have a revelation of Jesus Christ before he can go to hell.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, February 1978)

Thought for today: We were all predestinated to be conformed to the image of God’s Son. Let us fulfill our responsibility and accept that which God has given.

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Scripture reading: Romans 8:28

Let us look at Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Some of us do not know that all things work together for good. The only difference between those who know and those who don’t know is that those who don’t know grumble when they get hit but those who know rejoice. Every soul has problems sometimes. Some of us have them all the time. But some people know that their problems are deliberately designed by God to lift them into a higher realm. Others don’t know. And that’s the difference between the person who can rejoice over problems or whatever happens in his/her life and the one who cannot rejoice. Whether you do or you don’t know, all things work together for good to you.

Somebody may say, “There is a qualifying phrase here, ‘to them that love God.’” But there is a qualifying phrase to that qualifying phrase, “to them who are the called according to his purpose.” So from the time God called you, even before you were justified, all things began to work together for good to you. You were like the bull, outside of the Tabernacle, when those men threw the rope over him and began to haul him towards the gate of the Tabernacle. You too were hauled to the brazen altar to be born again. All things began to work together for good. There you were cursing and saying, “Oh, I have the worse luck. Why did it have to happen to me?” But God is very much pleased with the progress. Remember, “…all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, February 1978)

Thought for today: Let us be among those who know that all things work together for good to us. It will help us to rejoice in our problems, which are designed by God to lift us into a higher realm.

This message entitled “The Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ” was given by Brother Cecil duCille in 1973.

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